NJ Pregnancy and Children’s Health

If you do much online research on chiropractic care, you are bound to see an amazing amount of repetition on practitioners’ websites. We’re talking word-for-word by the hundreds, and though this might be technically defined as plagiarism, nobody seems to complain too much.

That is because much of the purloined parlance is within the industry, so to speak. Quoting information that educates the public on the advantages of chiropractic care and mainstream studies that cite its many advantages, seems to be shared material for chiropractic practices all over the country. Plus it is proven and factual.

Aside from informational pages on these websites, you’ll also see this wholesale misappropriation of wordage in blogs on sites promoting everything from nutrition to acupuncture. Bloggers should know better, since they are usually professional writers and copywriters, but, then again, why not repeat someone else’s writing if you can’t state it any better?

Look at it this way. If it was your writing showing up on websites all over the country, you might actually feel complimented because so many people in the field preferred your words over their own.

Chiropractors are not alone. This seems to be particularly pervasive in the healing arts, including medical doctors, dentists and even healthcare financial advisors. Their websites are replete with hundreds of words lifted from elsewhere, and it is almost impossible to trace their origin.

We’ve found numerous websites that are sharing writing without attribution, but we doubt anyone is going to mind all that much, because what’s good for one is apparently good for all— as long as the author doesn’t complain.

Take, for example, the following 65 words (part of several hundred but we don’t need to devote that many words to make the point):

In the United States, chiropractic is often considered a complementary health approach. According to the 2007 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), which included a comprehensive survey of the use of complementary health approaches by Americans, about 8 percent of adults (more than 18 million) and nearly 3 percent of children (more than 2 million) had received chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation in the past 12 months…

Even though this survey is pretty much outdated more than a decade later, we found the above passage unchanged on 54 different sites all over the country and once in the UK. Most were chiropractic sites, but it was also on sites promoting pain therapy, yoga, cancer treatment, Chinese martial arts, holistic nursing, massage therapy, a suburban newspaper and even Wikipedia (the subject was therapeutic touch).

Last month, we discussed four factors that increase a woman’s risk for back pain: a wider pelvis (resulting in greater pelvic instability due to knock-knee effect); breast size, mass, and weight; hormone levels and variability during menstruation and menopause; and adolescent growth spurts that can trigger idiopathic scoliosis three-times more commonly in women than men. We’ll continue the discussion this month…

Fast-food packaging may contain dangerous chemicals.

Many fast-food wrappers and boxes contain a potentially harmful chemical that can leach into the food they contain. Investigators tested more than 400 samples from restaurants nationwide and found that 46% of paper wrappers and 20% of paperboard box samples contained fluorine. Past studies have linked some fluorinated chemicals to kidney and testicular cancer, low birth weight, thyroid disease, decreased sperm quality, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure, and immune system problems in children. Much like the public outcry to reduce BPA in plastics, the public may need to call for a reduction in fluorinated chemicals in fast food packaging. Environmental Science & Technology, February 2017

Join Our Email List

Stay up-to-date with the latest news and offers from Oakland Spine and Physical Therapy.

* To qualify for same day guarantee, please call and mention our guarantee when requesting a same day appointment. Call must be received before 11am on normal days of operation. Offer may depend on type of care and insurance verification. If for some reason we cannot accommodate you on the day of your call, we will provide you with a gift card.